Tenor Benedikt Kristjánsson was born in Húsavík/Iceland in 1987. He received his first singing lessons at age 16 from his mother, Margrét Bóasdóttir, at the Reykjavík Academy of Singing and Vocal Arts. He was a member and frequent soloist in the renowned youth choir ›Hamrahlíðarkórinn‹ under the direction of Thorgerdur Ingolfsdottir. Since 2008, he has been a student of Prof. Scot Weir at the ›Hanns Eisler‹ School of Music Berlin. He has attended masterclasses given by Peter Schreiner, Christa Ludwig, Elly Ameling, Robert Holl, Andreas Schmidt and Helmut Deutsch.

Benedikt Kristjánsson was a prizewinner of the 2010 International Competition for Chamber Music with Guitar in Aschaffenburg, with guitarist Sergio Coto-Blanco. In 2011, he won 1st Prize and the Audience Prize in the International CantateBach Competition in Greifswald, Germany, and in 2012 he received the Audience Prize in the International J.S. Bach Competition in Leipzig.

Solo engagements have taken him to venues such as Reykjavik, Oslo, Szczecin, Zürich, Den Haag and Jerusalem with the tenor parts of J.S. Bach’s B Minor Mass, Christmas Oratorio, St. John Passion and St. Matthew Passion, Mozart’s Requiem, Handel’s Messiah, among others. He has appeared in concert with the song cycles ›Die schöne Müllerin‹ and ›Dichterliebe‹ in Iceland and Germany and various Benjamin Britten songs, as well as the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings.

In December 2012, he made his debut at the Staatsoper Berlin in the title role of Wolfgang Mitterer’s ›Das tapfere Schneiderlein‹ (›The Valiant Little Tailor‹). Other performances at the Staatsoper Berlin have included Salvatore Sciarrino’s ›Lohengrin‹, and the lead role in ›The Diary of One who Disappeared‹ by Leos Janacek. In October 2014, he debuted at the Theater Kiel in Lully’s ›Atys‹.

Tillmann Höfs was born in 1996 and grew up in a musical family. For a number of years he played the trumpet, won a 1st Prize in the national ›Jugend musiziert‹ competition and received scholarships from the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben and the NDR broadcasting corporation. In 2011, he switched to the horn. Again he won 1st Prize in the ›Jugend musiziert‹ competition, was awarded Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben and NDR scholarships and within the framework of ›50 years of Jugend musiziert‹ was given the opportunity to play a chamber concert with Lars Vogt.

In 2012, he was accepted at the Andreas Franke Academy of the University of Music and Drama in Hamburg, where he was taught until completing his secondary education in 2014 Prof. Ab Koster.

Tillmann Höfs was a member of the German National Youth Orchestra and was a regular player with the NDR Youth Orchestra under conductors such as Christoph von Dohnanyi, Thomas Hengelbrock, Krzysztof Urbanski, Christoph Eschenbach, Mathias Pintscher, Markus Stenz.

Tillmann Höfs has already given solo performances of Strauss and Mozart horn concerti.

Taiwan conductor Tung-Chieh Chuang already won numerous competitions at an early age, including second place in the 4th Gustav Mahler Competition in Bamberg and third place in the Jeunesses Musicales Bucharest International Conducting Competition in 2012. He received the Edwin B. Garrigues Annual Fellowship Award 2010 at the Curtis Institute of Music and is a winner of the National French Horn Competition in Taiwan.

Chuang has conducted the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Filarmonica George Enescu, The State Philharmonic of Sibiu, North-Bohemian Philharmonic Orchestra, l’Orchestre de Besançon Montbéliard Franche-Comté, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra Taiwan, among others.

In May 2011, Chuang took part in the organization of the Curtis Japan Benefit Concert in the Trinity Church in Philadelphia, the proceeds of which were donated entirely to the Japanese Red Cross following the Tohoku earthquake. In January 2013, Chuang was invited to play with maestro Kurt Masur in New York.

Chuang is currently a concert exam student alongside Nicolás Pasquet at the Franz Liszt College of Music in Weimar, where he is taught by Mark Gibson, Gustav Meier and Otto-Werner Müller, among others.

Born in 1997, Silas Zschocke began learning the violin at the age of six. When he was 11, he received viola lessons from Dietmar Mantel. Aged 12, he enrolled as a young student at the University of Music in Karlsruhe, where he studied in the violin class of Prof. Johannes Lüthy and took piano lessons with Andrej Jussow. He was also taught in Prof. Jörg-Wolfgang Jahn’s chamber music class.

In the 2012/13 winter semester, Silas Zschocke continued his viola studies with Prof. Ina Kertscher at the Institute for the Early Advancement of the Musically Highly Gifted at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media. He received further valuable musical input from Tabea Zimmermann, Hartmut Rohde, Roland Glassl, Ulf Hoelscher. Silas Zschocke is a 1st Prize winner in the national ›Jugend musiziert‹ competition in solo viola and chamber music. For his interpretation of Krzysztof Pendereckis’ ›Cadenza‹ he was awarded the Hans Sikorski Memorial Prize by the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben.

As a soloist he has performed at the Schwetzingen Mozart Festival, among others. He is a member of the German National Youth Orchestra and holds scholarships from the Jürgen Ponto Foundation and the Domhof Stiftung Weinheim.

In 2014, Silas Zschocke won the Werner Stiefel Award at the International Carl Flesch Academy in Baden-Baden.